“It’s beyond belief that you’re such a fool. You say to your wife and to the world, ‘This peerless woman is my comrade, but she is free; take her if you can.’”
Gordon laughed.
“Yes; but, Mark, old boy, God has not yet made the man who can take her from me.”
The one eye dreamily closed, the banker whistled softly, and said:
“I see.”
CHAPTER XXIII — THE NEW HEAVEN
Overman had appeared on the scene of Kate’s life in a peculiar crisis. Married two years, she had passed through the period of love’s ecstacy which woman finds first in self-surrender. She had just reached the point of sex growth when a revolt against man’s dominion became inevitable.
This mood of revolt was made stronger by Gordon’s fret over her social gatherings. In the dim light of the pulpit, preaching with mystic elation, he had seemed to her a god. Now, in the full blaze of physical possession, the divine glow had paled about his brow. She had found him only a man, self-conscious, egotistic and domineering. He had many personal habits she did not like. He was overfastidious in his dress, and critical and fussy about her lack of order in housekeeping. He was finicky about his food. He hated tea, declaring the odour made him sick. She felt this a covert thrust at her five-o’clocks.